


Marooned

by gouguruheddo



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dancer Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin), M/M, Main character names are not canon, Mental Health Issues, Professor Erwin Smith, Psychosis, Reincarnation, Short Chapters, Trans Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-08-19 14:56:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16536788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gouguruheddo/pseuds/gouguruheddo
Summary: Life was falling back into place for Eric Williams. After several years, he finally fell into a committed relationship, a job he loved, and good health--until the voices started. Until the man in the mirror looked unlike him, but the unfamiliar name felt familiar in his throat. Until the woman he loved became the man he had spent nights with in stuffy cabins and bloody cloaks. Until Eric Williams is less and less Eric and more like a commander, battling the titans of modern day.





	1. The Proposal

**Author's Note:**

> This is the only warning I'm giving: this fiction works with themes of mental illness and dysphoria and may be triggering to some. Please read at your own discretion.
> 
> This is a rewrite of my fanfiction with the same title. If you would like to read the original, [you can find it here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14053848/chapters/32373114).

Eric Williams is a late bloomer by most people’s standards. His straight toothed smile tells otherwise, accented with the well tailored suit and the cologne that smells of expensive celebrity names. He sits back in his seat, folds his arms across his chest as if he were a man that played the stock market. The dim lighting of the restaurant--a restaurant that he can barely afford to dress properly at--doesn’t betray the worry upon his brow. It doesn’t reveal the sagging weight in the pocket of his blazer that’s roughly the size of his heart. 

His eyes are slow to track the woman across from him. She’s animated, a particularly rare occurrence when she’s not on stage. His mind works on a three second delay and finally catches up. Frustration. Writing papers when she should be dancing. Practicing. Being on stage. She’s not there to write the next  _ Walden _ .

“I’m not sure I see the connection…” Eric leans forward in his chair, his elbows hitting the granite table top--so heavy, like kitchen counters in those new developments a few streets away.

“You don’t see the point either?”

Eric tries to clarify, but the frog is so large in his throat, he’s afraid he’ll throw it up. The weight in his pocket feels as heavy as a house.

“‘Ric?”

Eric lifts his head and smiles. “Any degree requires an analysis of critical thinking. You’re getting a degree to be well-rounded and more appealing to job prospects after you graduate. It may not make sense now, but it will later. I promise.”

“You sound like my mom. I’m paying you fuckheads $60k a year just for you to give me cookie-cutter answer? I’m disappointed in you,  _ professor _ .”

Eric chuckles just long enough until the jostling disturbs his stomach into nausea. “Liz, please.”

She offers him a crooked smile. “Good thing dinner is on you tonight.”

“Oh, lucky me. What do I get out of it?”

“ _ Me _ .”

Eric smiles, devilishly.

Eric has loved intensely once before, years ago, when he was an undergrad living in the thick humidity of northern Florida. He was going to move there and finish his graduate studies and get married after she walked for her Bachelor’s. They’d save for a house, they’d have a family, they’d go to Disney World for every holiday, and travel to central New York every Thanksgiving to visit Eric’s family. Eric found himself daydreaming about scrapbooks and retirement funds and family outings. Tiny fingers with matching tiny toes. 

Then he got accepted to Cornell, and that wasn’t in her plan. Two years was too long to wait to start their forever.

Eric studies Liz as if he’s majoring in her, his heart skipping at the appreciation of her beauty--soft faced, hair tied back loosely, a baggy olive sweater hanging off her shoulders revealing the thin straps of the leotards she never takes off. With a certainty, he knows he has never loved as much as he loves Liz. His pocket feels like the weight of ten thousand love letters, like fighting tens of thousands of soldiers for Helen. They’re all written for her, all written about them, sealed with the first kiss from two years ago in the most unconventional of places. “I love you,” he says, softly.

Liz tilts her head, fingers the stem of her water glass before picking it up and taking a sip. Her damp lip catches the gleam of the dull lighting, sending a pang to Eric’s groin. She smiles in a way that slices the sky open and brings brightness to anywhere it may be. He wants to see it every day; the weight in his pocket is the promise of being there to witness it.

They’ve talked about what they want now, what a life together would look like after Liz graduates. They dream of houses with flower boxes in the window, with a backyard big enough for two dogs, and a living room that can accomodate a dozen guests. Eric wants to fill the hypothetical guest rooms with kids, but he’s thirty-one now, age beginning to chisel at his features, and his mind isn’t as sharp as it used to be. He often wonders if he should even be allowed to pass along his broken genes--if it would be too cruel for whatever offspring he did have. He’s come to find solace in Liz’s lack of desire to have a family.

“You gonna eat?” Liz says. 

The food had arrived without Eric noticing, and he runs a hand down his face as he breathes out sharply. “Oh.”

Liz puts down her cutlery, eyebrows drawing down with a slight scoff. “You doin’ ok?”

“I’m fine, darling,” Eric reassures, but the weight in his pocket crushes down on him like a boulder. He meditates on the sound of Liz uttering the word “yes”, plays it on repeat in his head as he fumbles for his silverware. “How is your fish?”

“Eric.”

Eric looks up at her sheepishly and bites at the edge of his lip. “I’m just nervous.”

“Why?”

Eric’s eyes dodge off to another table. It’s Wednesday night, and there’s only two other couples in the restaurant. Tourist season in Saratoga doesn’t hit full swing until late May, and it didn’t occur to Eric how inopportune it was for them to have their anniversary on April Fool’s. “I’m on a date with a gorgeous woman; why would I not be nervous?”

“Because we’ve been dating for two years? It’s just me, you dork.”

Eric huffs a laugh, and he wishes more than anything that he had ordered another drink. But the weight is too much, and he might die if he doesn’t relieve it. “Liz, babe, can you…” He looks around nervously to the other two occupied tables and makes sure their attention is set within their own bubbles. He wanted to do this earlier, but his mind got away from him, and now he made it awkward. Fuck, he made it awkward. 

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

Eric adjusts his tie around his neck, loosens it and slides from his chair. He pats his jacket pocket. Again.

“Eric?”

“Liz… Elizabeth…” Eric braces his hand on the granite table, just like the ones in the new developments a couple streets away, with the flower boxes in the window, and the backyards big enough for two dogs. “I…”

“What’s… Going on? Are you sick?”

Eric shuffles his right hand into his left breast pocket, fishes for it for an entire four heartbeats before he catches it with the tip of his index finger. He’d practiced this in the mirror at least five hundred times. He’d been waiting his entire adult life for this moment. Pulling it from his pocket, it fumbles from the lip and slips from between his fingers, rolling down the front of his suit jacket and tossing down onto the floor with a soft  _ ting _ . He watches as the ring rolls under the adjacent empty table, his large body scurrying down awkwardly to the floor and hastily patting around the table legs to find the piece of jewelry. After his palm lands on the ring, he goes to stand up quickly, his head slamming into the granite top of the table. “Oh  _ fuck _ .”

“Eric!” Liz rises from her seat. Eric rolls back onto his heels and sits on his butt, the hand with the ring in it rubbing gingerly against the crown of his head. “You ok?”

Eric laughs, heartily, realizing quickly that no amount of alcohol or rehearsal would make this go as perfectly as he had hoped. The only thing he knew for certain was how the word “yes” sounded from Liz’s lips. “Liz?”

“Yes, doofus. Get up off the floor before they kick us out.”

“Wait, Liz, no,” Eric reaches for her hand and catches it before she finds her way back to her seat. “These past two years have been the best of my life.”

Liz freezes.

“And… Ah fuck, that hurt,” Eric chuckles softly under his breath as he runs a thumb along Liz’s stiff knuckles. “Uh… So, what I’m saying is, I want you to continue being the best part of my life. Forever.”

Liz takes a deep breath.

“Elizabeth Keller,” Eric pauses to situate the ring within his index and thumb. It’s a simple ring, a silver band with an inset diamond, something that won’t get caught on clothing or upset the frugalness of his soon-to-be-bride. He smiles at her like the first time, in the darkness of the bar, when he was there thinking he was looking for the company of other men. Instead, he found her, hot and dangerous, hydrogen to his chlorine, putty in his hands, a love that came at first fuck. “Will you marry me?”

Eric’s smile remains, until the beats of his heart start to tick too much like a clock, and seconds pass without hearing the word that had played like a record in his head. One, two, ten, eleven. The smile fades, and he swallows. He side glances at the other table to see their eyes are on them, the woman with a hand over her mouth waiting anxiously for the same answer.

“Liz?”

“ _ Here _ ?” Liz hisses.

Eric blinks and tries to catch his breath. “E-excuse me?”

“Now? Right now?” Liz says low. She kneels slightly. “Eric…” 

“Is that a…”

Liz brings both her hands to her face and breathes heavily into them before revealing her face again. The tears are heavy at the bottom of her eyes, and even in the light, the redness is as bright as a smoldering fire. “ _ No _ ,” she croaks out quietly, trying to keep the anonymity of her answer, but the response hits Eric so hard that both his knees slump to the floor, his shoulders sagging heavily.

“No?”

“I’m… I’m sorry. I love you, but no…”

“She deserves better,” Eric hears the man at the other table whisper.

“I… Uh…” Eric tries to collect the weight of all the love letters, the foundation of their house, the promise of a future that opened with warmth at his bedside, but it’s broken into pebbles, passing through his fingers like a broken hourglass. How could he have miscalculated so poorly? How could he have fucked up again? Again? Again.

“She needs somebody more stable. Somebody that doesn’t have a death sentence.”

Eric peers over the top of the table and glares at the man at the other table. The man raises his eyebrow as a response and looks at his companion, muttering a soft “what?” under his breath.

“I’m going to head to Patricia’s tonight,” Liz says, rushing to grab her purse from the back of her chair and slinging it on her shoulder.

“Let me drive you at least. It’s dark…”

“I’ll take the bus back to campus if I have to.”

“Liz…”

“I’ll be fine. Eric… I’ll…” She looks down at him, and the tears are there now, bleeding black tracks down her cheeks like a cracked statue. “I wasn’t expecting this. I love you, but…”

“Call me?” Eric’s fingers catch the edge of a tile on the floor, and he digs his nails so deep that he feels them peeling from the flesh.

“When I’m ready.”

Eric breathes in, swallows, and nods. “I love you.”

Liz drags the palm of her hand against her cheekbone, nodding once, her face returning straight, stoic. She leaves the restaurant like a specter, like she was never there to begin with, her dinner barely eaten, her water never refilled. Two years wasted. Two years gone.

The waiter comes by to ask what is wrong, offering a shoulder squeeze in solidarity as he pulls Eric to his feet. The owner is generous enough to remove the three shots of whiskey from his bill, giving him another for free as an extra condolence. 

The drive back to Albany is quiet and empty, except for the voice that doesn’t stop repeating “no” over and over. Again.


	2. The Name

Leland Keller comes from privilege by most people’s standards, despite his fatherless upbringing or the overbearingness of his mother. A sophomore in college not by choice, but rather a boy with long hair and manicured nails sucking on a silver spoon supplied by a widowed uncle that doesn't even call on his birthday. He's talented, or so he's been told, but not talented enough to make it big. Not talented enough to erase the weight on his chest that thumps in time like the syllables of his name.

“Leland?”

It’s his name, but sometimes it feels like a dream, sometimes he needs to hear it more than once to remember it’s his.

“Hey, Leland. Com’on.”

And maybe it’s not. Maybe he’d rather it not be. Maybe thinking he was worthy of the name, that it wasn’t some kind of sham, that he had the right to ask his friends to learn it, use it, to inconvenience themselves for it. For him. For this... A name. What is a name?

What is a name but an ill conceived joke?

“Leland!”

An open palm against his face, grumbling while he opens his bleary eyes--fairy baubles of string lights, sheer curtains, dried flowers, inspirational letters on the wall… He covers his face and breathes in sharply, smells skunky weed masked by lavender incense. “Fuck…”

“God, I thought you were dead.”

“Don’t be retarded,” Leland says, “We could only be so lucky.”

“Lee, what the fuck.”

Leland looks up at Patricia and offers a weak, defeated smile. “Yeah?”

“I’m not gonna let you sleep here unless you tell me what the fuck is up.”

“You’ll kick me out on the streets at,” Leland squints at the analog clock on the wall, only to realize that the batteries are dead. “What time is it?”

“2am. And yeah, you know I would.”

He knows she would.

“Don’t make me…” He pleads.

He knows she will.

“I’m gonna need more of that,” he points at the bottle of vodka at the edge of the coffee table. It’s a fresh bottle, barely touched, but he’s a cheap date with no fat on his bones. Patricia shakes her head. “Bitch, you can’t do that to me right now.”

“Lee. I’m actually scared for you right now.”

Leland looks at her, a pretty little thing with hair like a Florida orange and eyes like caramel, two flavors that, against all odds, she marries beautifully. He had so little when he moved to Saratoga--nothing but pockets full of a dead uncle’s money, a broken identity, and enough anger to wreck a car. But he found Patricia, found solace in her brand of crassness and relinquished control to her when he needed it most.

She was the only one that had been there when it was almost too late.

“Patty…” Leland says, quietly.

She moves closer to Leland and wraps her arm around his, placing a warm cheek on his shoulder. “What happened?”

What didn’t happen? Why did he waste all his time with this life? Why, why did he let Eric fuck him in that shitty apartment--the one with the hole in the ceiling and the freezer full of frozen pizzas? Fucked so good, so stupid, that he thought he could find happiness in it--thought that he could bury two syllables under four in the feeling of it. For two years, he continued with the name, a name that he gritted his teeth at, that felt as flimsy as the papers that made it legal. But for two years, why, for two years, did he let this happen? What kind of fucking disgusting piece of shit, what kind of fake liar, what kind of hack, hoax, hypocrite...

“Lee.”

Leland looks down at his hand, his fists curled tight, fingernails digging crescents into his palms. He relaxes his grip. “I can’t...” The feeling grabs his chest again, squeezes it so hard that he wants to scream. “I fuckin’ can’t.”

“You can’t what?”

Leland had loved intensely once before back in the foothills of southeastern Pennsylvania. He had been the boy down the street, hair always long and shaggy and tangled with thistles from the fields across the street. Leland had never seen eyes as pale, like the sky reflected in snow. Leland’s mother thought it was cute how they got along--called them boyfriend/girlfriend at an age where they couldn’t even fathom what love meant. And they were inseparable--grade school, middle school, high school. Leland gave him all his trust, his dreams, his hopes for a future. He gave up his virginity, he gave him the promise of his life with the ring around his finger.

He agreed that he wasn’t man enough. He willed himself to be feminine in all the stereotypical ways. He made himself believe he could be happy. He made himself believe he was still in love, as if he were old enough to know what it meant. His body, his heart, his mind--he had given it all to him, and surely he saw Leland for what he truly was.

Afterall, it was just a phase.

At the end of the phase was a hospital bed, greasy hair stuck to his forehead, bandaged arms, IV dripping into his veins, his mother next to him when she should be 400 miles away. His arms were itchy with scars his couldn’t scratch, like a name that itched at the tip of his tongue that he could never speak.

He is Elizabeth, getting fucked over the edge of a dirty kitchen counter, arm still bandaged under a long sleeve shirt. He is Elizabeth, saying a name that is not his.

She is Elizabeth, and she is in love with Eric.

“Lee, please,” Patricia gently touches her arm.

“Why didn’t… I ever tell him?” Liz stares off at nothing.

“Tell him what?”

“He doesn’t know me… How can I tell him now?”

Patricia takes Liz’s hand in hers. “That you’re… Leland?”

Leland nods and swallows hard to keep the tears from breaching. He shakes his head. “I can’t… Not again. I’m so…” His hand clenches and his fingernails bite into his palm. “Goddammit.”

“Honey,” Patricia mutters, sitting up straight and wrapping her arms around Leland. He melts into her warmth, but the pain draws away any emotion, and he sits staring, breathing… Existing. “What happened?”

What didn’t happen? Eric wants to marry somebody else that isn’t him, and who the fuck is he? What right does he have to say anything now? To betray the gift of Eric’s love by crawling out from under this lie?

“Leland…”

“I said no…”

“To what?”

“What do you think? What important thing do people say ‘no’ to!?”

They’re both silent, Patricia’s hand rubbing up and down Leland’s arm. She nods against the top of his head. “You want him to know?”

“Of course…” Leland brings a hand to his face and sighs, struggling against his brain to conceive words. “But I fucking can’t handle somebody telling me I’m not who I am again.” He slaps his hand against his forehead. “Not Eric. I can’t hear that from ‘Ric.”

“Do you think he would?”

“I don’t know… Maybe? Probably. Maybe not… God, I don’t know, Patty.”

“He loves you, you know.”

“What the fuck does love have to do with anything?” Liz spits. “When the fuck has love ever mattered?”

Patricia curls in around Liz and wraps her in love despite her eagerness to toss it away. “What’s love got to do with it?” She huffs a laugh as Liz groans. “I’d say it has a lot to do with it.” Patty squeezes Liz closer. “The question is now: what are you going to do?”

The look on Liz’s mother’s face, like she just watched her child die before her eyes. The look of confusion, the splice of anger, on her ex-fiance's face. Their words that tried to steal away her identity, that tried to tell her they knew her better than she did, to the point that she believed them...

The way Eric looked at her upon learning her name, repeating it like poetry, like a taste he craved…

And she believed it all. Elizabeth could be good enough if it was good enough for Eric. Was it all worth losing in exchange for dropping a few letters of her name? Could it at all be worth it, even after saying no?

Why did Liz say no?

“I don’t know.” Liz sinks further into Patricia, until her head is on Patricia’s lap. “I just want to sleep…”

Patricia runs her hand through her hair, touches her cheek, gives her warmth as she has little else to give. “Just this once, I’ll surrender.”

She sticks to her word. Liz tries to sleep, but the tears come quietly. Her back heaves, and Patricia’s thigh grows damp. She sniffles heavily, but Patricia says nothing. She slumps against the arm of the couch, and Liz fills the space between her legs, resting her head beside her belly and squishing her cheek to the couch cushion.

She’s too emotionally exhausted to move.

Too emotionally exhausted to find a restful sleep.

Leland jolts awake at 9am, his eyes trying to focus on the numbers displayed on his phone, his nose trying to decipher the smell coming from the kitchen, all along trying to remember where and who he is. He runs his hand through his hair, picking at tangles that had formed during the night. He checks his mail. Social media. Texts. Then the memory of last night morphs back into reality and his eyes lose focus, his body slumping forward on the couch until he’s nearly on the floor.

What has Liz done? She just ruined the best thing that’s ever happened to her for a stupid, idiotic, no-good name. How can she fix this? Why did she say no? For a name? For a life she doesn’t fit? What gave her the right? What right does she have? How could she have...

“Eat,” Patricia arrives, dropping a plate of french toast on the coffee table in front of her. They’re slightly burnt around the edges, but the gallon of syrup drenched across the slices will do enough to cover the taste.

Liz looks up at her, tries to focus on her pretty face, wants to reach out to touch her soft skin, all while wanting to scream for her to fuck off. “Tea?”

“It’s coming, it’s coming.” Patricia turns to leave, but Leland snatches her hand before she can go.

“Don’t.”

“What?”

“I’m so sorry…” The tears pool at the edges of his eyelids. “I’m so sorry, I don’t want to…”

“Lee, hun,” Patricia flows into Leland’s arms, her knees resting on the floor between his legs as she pulls him forward for a hug. “You don’t want to do what?”

“I can’t… Do… This… Not this… Anymore,” his mouth opens into a sob, his hands facing palm out against Patricia’s back.

“What?”

“I have to tell him…”

Patricia squeezes him closer, another sob expelling from his throat.

“And if he…”

“I’ll be here.”

Another sob.

“If he leaves…”

“He’s not like Fuller, Lee...”

“I’ll fuckin’ survive… But I can’t...”

“We love you...”

Leland buries his face in Patricia’s neck and twists his wrists to grab at the back of her shirt. The weight of his name thrums through his veins, two beats at a time, this name that has stolen love from him, the one that bullied him into saying no, the one he hid from like a monster under the bed…

Despite it all, it’s the most real thing he has ever owned.

He detaches from Patricia and stumbles for his phone. She watches in a quiet showcase of pride, the sent message chime dinging as soon as his shoulders hit the back of the couch. They’re quiet for a few minutes, Leland’s breathing drawing in and out in slow rhythmic intervals.

“I’m fuckin’ starving,” Leland proclaims, voice crackling with mucus.

Patricia smiles. “Eat up, hungry man.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'll add an illustration later i'm just whaaatteeeveerrr
> 
> hi guys sorry this is taking me a mcforevertime to write this. it's hard as fuck to write tbh. i'll finish it someday. 
> 
> thanks to my roommate for reading this over like three times, and for helping me just detangle this entire mess of a story so i can even feel confident enough to write it at all.
> 
> comments give me life. i love you all. ok bye.


End file.
